


One Breath

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-07
Updated: 2002-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 05:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forgiving</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Breath

**Author's Note:**

> a contribution to the X-Title challenge. "Alien Corn" is from Keats, and refers to the biblical story of Ruth, where the "Whither thou" comes from. 

## One Breath

by Brighid

<http://www.debchan.com/livia/brighid/br-smallville.htm>

* * *

Disclaimer: Soooooooo not mine. I kill houseplants! Nor am I making a profit. I thnk you need to be much smuttier than this to make a profit. And have a webcam. 

For Livia, natch 

One Breath 

By Brighid 

One thing that Lex has come to learn is that Clark Kent is all about in-betweens: between boy and man, between innocence and experience, between truth and lie, and now, apparently, between earth and... 

sky. 

He thinks, perhaps, he should be angry. It isn't often that he trusts, that he believes. Never, in fact, might be a better term. And yet he had believed Clark, or at least, he had wanted to, and that was something almost entirely unknown to him. Belief. Faith. 

Love. 

And that, there, is perhaps why he is not as angry as he thinks he should be. He loves Clark, loves the soft underbelly of the boy, loves the earnestness and awkwardness of him. Clark has at every turn been something new, something different, and that alone has been enough to captivate Lex, fascinate him. 

He loves Clark now, all flushed and fumbling, trying to build bridges with words, trying to close the distance that makes them both ache. He sees the clench and skitter of strong, square hands, wonders what they'd feel like against him, wonders how hard they could hold him. 

If they could hold him hard enough. 

He thinks, just maybe, that they could. 

All this time, and every day a lie. And he'd known it, known it in his gut, never mind the computer simulations and the twisted metal of his car, preserved like old bones, like a monster from a bygone era. Pulled apart and studied and still the wrong, wrong, oh-so-wrong answer. 

Alien. 

Far more human than Lex has ever been, though, and that makes him smile. Clark, the alien, so much better schooled in the nuances of humanity than Lex Luthor, who can ape and mimic and play all the social niceties but who has never quite gotten it right, not when it really counted. No Ma and Pa Kent to instill the humanity into him, to raise him up right. God, but he wants to laugh. Clark, however, is in the middle of being so very goddamned earnest and Lex suspects he just wouldn't appreciate the irony at work here, not right at this moment. 

Best not to point and laugh when someone's naked in front of you, literally or otherwise. 

But ... Christ! Two aliens, meteor and metaphor, stranded on planet Earth, in Kansas of all places? Good fucking god. Alien corn, and now ... whither thou goest, I will go? It seems ... almost predestined, and who is he to fly in the face of predestination? One of Cassandra's signposts, and he has to choose, has to choose. 

So easy to go smooth as marble, as meteor stone, to smile thinly and flay Clark with words. Clark's body might be impervious, perhaps, but his heart ... his heart is human enough, really. More remote, perhaps, but only by necessity. Aliens, alienation. 

So easy, so much safer ... but he's spent his whole life courting unsafe. So he smiles, but not thinly, not sharply, and his words are gentle and his eyes are open and his fingers, they feel just right against the surprising softness of Clark's mouth. 

"Just breathe," he hears himself saying. "One breath at a time, just breathe, Clark. It's going to be okay, I forgive you ..." and that's all he says before those lips, they open up and kiss his fingers wetly, hotly, and Clark's mouth, it's warm and alive and real, nothing alien about it at all. 

And then he's leaning into Clark, sliding wet, warm fingers along the pulse of Clark's throat. One beat, two, three ... and then he seals their mouths together, breathes a soft sigh up into Clark's mouth, and it's a circle completed, this one breath flowing between them, this second chance to learn to be ... human. 

)0( 

An End 


End file.
